


Chattery Teeth

by marchingjaybird



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-13
Updated: 2010-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-07 22:39:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/69973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marchingjaybird/pseuds/marchingjaybird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys are investigating a string of unexplained suicides, and now Sam can't stop seeing something out of the corner of his eye...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chattery Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on the LJ community [sharp_teeth](http://community.livejournal.com/sharp_teeth/profile)

They've followed the string of suicides through three states.

They talk to loved ones, friends, family members. No one has an explanation, no one knows what to say. There is some hesitant talk about paranoia, a sudden onset of crippling anxiety, a tendency to glance over the shoulder, to scratch and pick at the skin of the forearms. One of the victims, a sixteen year old girl, was found dead in her room, surrounded by pictures of her and her friends, and in every photograph she'd used a pair of nail scissors to extract her own eyes.

They haunted Sam, those pictures. Some had been spattered with her blood still, and as he sat on her mother's couch in his blue wool suit, hair combed back from his forehead, he had flipped through the pictures with obsessive attention. All those black holes above a smiling mouth, surrounded by brightness and laughter and youth.

"She didn't cut the eyes out of her friends," he observed.

"No," her mother said softly. "Only herself."

"Any idea why?" He looked at the woman, at the tears pooling in her eyes.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't. She was so scared. Kept saying that it was getting closer." She choked, pressed her fingertips against her lips. "I didn't know what to do. I called a psychiatrist."

"You did all you could," Sam answered. Hollow reassurance. "Do you mind if I keep this?"

She looked at the picture in his hand for a long moment, then shook her head and burst into tears.

*

"It's weird, right?" Sam rested his elbows on the edge of the table and stared at his brother. Dean glanced at the photo, nodded, took a huge bite of hamburger. "All of them were like this."

"How'd she die?" Dean asked.

"Suicide," Sam said. "Same as the others."

"Wrists?" Dean asked, as though asking the color of the sky. Sam stared at him for a long moment.

"Throat," he said.

"Ouch." Dean glanced at the picture, wrinkled his nose. "Put it away, Sam. Someone's gonna think you're a creep." Sam tucked the picture back into his pocket and pushed his food around on his plate and wondered.

*

That night, as he was unlocking the door to their hotel room, he saw it out of the corner of his eye, a flicker of paleness, jerky movement twitching closer and closer and he turned, key held in front of him like a weapon, heart thundering in his chest.

Dean raised an eyebrow, held up a paper bag. "Got some dinner," he said. There were grease spots showing through already. "You all right?"

Sam breathed out, nodded his head. "I'm fine."

*

He was brushing his teeth when he saw it again.

A twitch in the mirror, wormy skin glistening under the fluorescent lights. He saw its face now, too-wide black eyes, a gaping smile full of yellowing teeth that chattered and clicked and he turned, slamming his elbow against the towel rack, grabbing the only thing he had at hand. The water glass flew and Dean batted it aside.

"The hell?" he asked.

"Nothing," Sam said. His chest heaved. His fingers twitched. "I thought I saw something."

"Uh huh." Dean narrowed his eyes and held up his cell phone. "I called Bobby. He's never heard of something like this, but he's going through his books. Said he'll call us once he finds something out."

"Good," Sam said. He turned back to the mirror, focused on nothing. It didn't come back. "Good."

*

A day passed.

He saw it while he was sitting in the car, waiting for Dean to come out of the gas station. He saw it when they sat outside to eat dinner. He saw it getting into the shower, saw it getting out of the shower, saw it as he climbed into bed. He heard those chattering teeth, felt those big, black eyes. By the end of the day, he could smell it, damp and rotting and vile, the scent like a living thing that crawled into his nostrils and lived there, choking him as he struggled against sleep.

His eyes closed, finally, but he did not rest. What should have been a sound sleep was interrupted by nightmares. Chattering teeth and eyes like bottomless pits. White skin. Grasping fingers. He shied away from it, twisted to see it. There was darkness all around him and the figure loomed in front of him and he saw it, truly saw it, for the first time.

The eyes, the stretched smile, the teeth, the white, white skin. The jaw line, the cheekbones, the all-too familiar arch of an eyebrow.

He woke up, sat up, stared across the room at the other bed and the sleeping form curled up in it. It made sense now, all of it made sense. The movement in the corner of his eye, the omnipresence of the creature, the fact that every time he looked, it was Dean that was standing there. Dean, who was starting to seem increasingly disinterested in the case.

Yes, it made sense now, and Sam knew what he had to do.

*

"It was her, wasn't it?" he asked. She stared at him across the table, eyes wide and terrified and brimming with tears. "She was possessed. The eyes, and the teeth." He shuddered. "She didn't kill herself, did she?"

Slowly, hesitantly, she shook her head. They both looked at the picture between them, the cut-out eyes and the wide smile that seemed sinister now that he knew.

"What did she want?" he asked.

"I don't know," she whispered. "But she got closer and closer every time and… those _teeth_!" She sobbed, burying her face in her hands, mumbling around her damp fingers. "I was afraid. There was something in her and I had to… I had to let it out..."

"You were too late," Sam said.

"I was too late," she repeated. Sam stared at the picture, chills creeping down his spine.

"I won't be," he vowed.

*

Dean slept as Sam tied him to the bed. Wrists first, then his ankles, and he woke slightly, stirring and opening his eyes as Sam secured the last tie. His eyes were bleary, unfocused, but they grew bright with panic as he realized what was happening.

"Sam," he said, voice low with urgency. "What are you doing?"

"I know what's going on," Sam said. He reminded himself to be cold, reminded himself that this was not his brother, not his Dean. "It's all right. I'll help you."

"I don't need help, Sammy!" He struggled, lips peeling back in animal fear, and as Sam turned away to get the knife, he saw those chattering teeth, those laughing black eyes, and he knew he had to be strong.

"It's okay," he said again. His fingers sweated against the handle of the knife. His hand shook. "It'll only hurt for a second. Just… I just have to let it out." The tip of the knife dug into Dean's skin and blood welled up and he almost stopped. What if it wasn't true? What if he was losing his mind?

He turned his head and the blood became smoke, black oily smoke that roiled and spilled and those yellow teeth gnashed and snapped and he choked a little and pushed harder and dragged the knife down, laying open Dean's arm. His brother screamed and Sam ground his teeth and his mind went to that forbidden place, that place that wondered what might happen if this didn't work. If Dean didn't make it.

He talked still, babbling and sobbing and struggling and the black smoke boiled out and Sam soothed him, smoothing his hands across his brother's stomach, urging him to be still, to let it happen. And it was _working_; he turned his head and the black eyes dulled, the dead skin contracted, the teeth crumbled to powder and fell away. "Almost there," he whispered. "One more cut and the rest will come out, and then you'll be all right."

He didn't hear the door opening, didn't hear the footsteps padding across the floor. He saw Dean's eyes rise and focus and widen, and he turned just in time to catch Bobby's balled up fists square on the jaw.

*

Dean sat on the edge of Sam's bed, wounded arm cradled in his lap. He was dizzy, weak. So much blood gone. Not enough to kill him, but if Sam had cut the other arm, if Bobby hadn't walked in at just that second…

Wasn't worth thinking about.

"I'm still not sure what it is," Bobby said. They both stared at Sam. Bobby had knocked him out and tied him to a chair, and he sat and stared at both of them, eyes wild, mouth twitching. "You know why he attacked you?"

"He just kept saying he had to get it out of me," Dean said. Sam jerked his head to the side and moaned softly, struggling so that the chair thumped against the floor. "I don't know what he was talking about. He's been… weird lately, though. Staring at this picture. Jumping every time I come close to him."

Bobby picked up the photograph that Sam had taken from the dead girl's room and stared at the cut out eyes. "Gonna take some time to figure this out," he offered.

"Take all the time you need," Dean answered. "I'm kinda pissed at him right now, anyway."

*

And Sam sat in the chair and turned his head and saw them both, chattering teeth and black eyes and choking, chuckling voices as they discussed what to do with him. _Contagious_, he thought. _It must be contagious_. Bobby had touched the smoke and now he was infected, too.

He rocked back and forth, closed his eyes. Incessant snapping, louder and louder, and then he remembered. There was the bed and the knife and Dean, stretched out and bleeding, and then Bobby and then…

…and then blood. Sam stared at his face in the mirror, at the smears of Dean's blood across his cheek. He turned his face away, glanced out of the corner of his eye, and watched sideways as his yellow, yellow teeth chomped and chattered away in his too-large mouth.


End file.
